Jihad against music on the way. "Morocco music festivals bring culture clash," by Alfred de Montesquiou for the Associated Press, August 30
CASABLANCA, MOROCCO -- This is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, but you wouldn't know it from the music festivals.Must be a real cacophony considering this story says the mosques' calls to prayer are often "too loud."The Casablanca Festival turns the commercial capital into an urban Woodstock, with masses of young people clogging the mosque-filled streets and partying to the pulse of hip-hop, rock, pop and Arab music. An estimated 2 million people attend free concerts at a dozen venues.[...]
The promotion of culture and leisure by Morocco's moderate government has a political undertone. The country's increasingly powerful Islamist groups view it as a deliberate attempt to divert young people from traditional Islamic values. Even some government officials acknowledge that the aim is to promote the liberal values they'd like to see society embrace over radical Islam.[...]Once more, the hackneyed notion that with wealth and prosperity goes secularism, and with poverty and misery goes Islamic "fundamentalism." Guess that's why Saudi Arabia, one of, if not the, richest Muslim nation, is also the most "radical"?The streets full of trendy teenagers dancing to the Tecktonik craze that has swept Europe stand in striking contrast to the near-medieval living conditions in Morocco's countryside or the sprawling slums around Casablanca, which have become a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism.
Such festivals would be unheard of in more rigorous Muslim states, where the mixing of boys and girls, free sale of alcohol or even dancing in public can be forbidden. But Morocco, a strong U.S. ally and a major tourist destination, prides itself on a cultural diversity that allows scantily clad girls to attend a concert side by side with women wearing Islamic head scarves.[...]
But many have qualms with all this revelry.[...]
The most vocal critics are usually affiliated with the Islamists, who hold growing sway in Morocco. The gap between the educated, wealthy and Westernized elite and the vast majority of the impoverished population has been widening.
"We stand against the debauchery observed during these festivals," Abdelilah Benkirane, leader of Morocco's biggest authorized Islamist group, the Justice and Development Party, said on a state TV talk show."Have you seen the type of groups they invite? The suggestive, scantily clad women?" he was quoted as saying by the liberal-leaning TelQuel weekly magazine.
More hard-line Islamist groups, like the semi-clandestine Justice and Charity movement -- viewed as the largest in Morocco -- see more than bad morality in the partying.
"It's not only dissolute, it's cynical," said Nadia Yassine, spokeswoman for the movement and the daughter of its founder, Sheik Yassine.
"It's like ancient Rome: bread and circus to keep the masses happy," she said.[...]
One high-ranking Interior Ministry official, who spoke anonymously because this is not a publicly avowed government policy, recalled how some Islamists began speaking out against public beaches. Groups walked the seafront to preach for better morals and fewer bikinis, or to set up segregated areas. "No one wants to be bothered on the beach, so people began shying away," the official said.
The government's reaction was to promote beach sports and leisure activities as well as song and dance contests, even though it bothers the Islamists, the official said.
Ammor, the festival organizer, said the government is on a mission to make Morocco a place where Arab and Western cultures can interplay, rather than dwell on the tensions of the last decade.
"People call it a clash of civilizations," he said. "I think it's a clash of ignorance."
That it may be. But who is ignorant of who remains to be seen.
This could be the qualm before the storm.
I suspect they'd object just as thoroughly to a concert performance of, for example, Bach's Mass in B Minor, Vivaldi's Gloria, or a gig by a southern Baptist Gospel choir clad from neck to toe in all-enveloping choir robes, or a western orchestra in full formal gear, playing Mozart or Beethoven.
Note well, anyone new to this site who doesn't know very much about Islam - all music is theoretically haraam, forbidden. It's music *as such* that sharia bans. ALL of it: sacred or profane, vocal or instrumental. ALL OF IT, ideally, according to sharia, should be silenced. This has got to be one of the most egregious displays of total insanity ever invented by any human belief system. So every note of music to be found in the Islamosphere, every song that is sung there, is a testament not to Islamic culture, but to the simple fact that trying to prevent human beings from singing and making music is like trying to stop the birds from singing or the tide from coming in.
There is no music in the Islamic paradise. At least: I went through the Qur'an looking at the descriptions of what's to be found in Paradise and although wine (non-intoxicating celestial variety) and sex and food were on offer in abundance, music was conspicuous by its absence. (Correct me, Mr Spencer, if I'm wrong, but that's what a trawl through the Dawood translation told me).
Purist Islam's official enmity toward music is one of its ugliest features - especially if one is a Christian for whom the very essence of heaven has always been, traditionally, music [think of all those stereotypical pictures of figures in white robes sitting on fluffy clouds playing golden harps].
one way to destroy islam is to export our music! these taliban styled islamists cannot stand to see people singing,dancing and mixing it up with alcohol on top of that. nope you cannot have people enjoying themselves, we have such a geat way to destroy islam is to let WEsttern culture seep in, wheter it be bach or U2, either way islam and joy do not mix!
"one way to destroy islam is to export our music! these taliban styled islamists cannot stand to see people singing,dancing and mixing it up with alcohol on top of that."
I think that would be like standing in front of a bunch of bee-hives and poking sticks at them or better yet, a cave of Grizzly bears. If we're going to do that, we shouldn't bank on them giving up their "bearness" but showing us their true bear nature.
All this "Moderate" vs. "Radical" Islam in and of itself to me only serves to confuse the issues that confronts West vs. Islam, no matter the situation [in this case music]. It should be "non committed socials" vs. "committed fundamentalist" Muslims...for example. Its misleading to think that Islam somehow will ever be free of the fascist Jihad mindset, and that there is honest dedicated Muslims who are 100% sold out to the Quran that tolerate western culture when they are in positions of power.
A few bombs and all this "debauched," "dissolute," and "cynical" Western style music will be gone.
Its only a matter of time...
As reflected in some of the comments on this thread, there is a prominent strain of thought here at JW that all Muslims are the same...or that, whatever differences exist among them, it's irrelevant to us infidels. I strongly disagree...and think the current government in Rabat (and, for that matter, in Algiers, Tunis, Amman and elsewhere), is very preferable to the fanatical one aspiring to replace it.
Yeah well we've got a few 'qualms' of our own concerning Islam -- like:
doctrinally-blessed child rape,
gender apartheid,
no respect for the sanctity of life,
mutilations,
whippings,
stonings (does "moderate" Islam use only very small stones?)
sub-human status accorded people of other faiths,
the leadership of this belief system being in the hands of plump men with sulky, over-indulged pouts and snarling eyes...
and a few other things
The pun in the first post deserves attention and admiration.
Hee, hee, hee!
Drugs, sex, and rock'n'roll! It's coming for you, Islam, just like it already came for the West. It destroyed European culture, and it destroyed American culture, and now it's going to destroy what there is of Moslem culture. And you won't be able to stop it. The only way you can stop it is to kill your daughters at the first sign of infection. But when you've killed all your daughters, you've put an end to Islam anyway. So, heads you lose, and tails you lose too.
At least in the West, the civilized remnant can still cling to the Berlin Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony, the Louvre and the Hermitage, and the Bayreuth and Stratford festivals. They have no counterparts in Islam.
Thank you, Hugh.
And a tip of the hat to Zena for the suggestion on exporting our music.
one way to destroy islam is to export our music! [...] whether it be bach or U2, either way islam and joy do not mix!
Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess
--
PLEASE export Bono to islam - FOREVER and for ALL TIME!
and Cat Stevens too, Ummah Gummah -- oh, that's right, he's already exported
but he keeps right on bouncing back
I just walked in from the Jimmy Buffet concert. The Islamists should get a load of that. Beach balls, hula skirts, coconut bras, volcano fountains, trucks that look like sharks and have their beds filled with sand and people getting "lei-ed" all over the place. You could hardly walk in any direction because the place was so packed. And while Jimmy is around 60-ish he shows no sign of stopping. (The 08-09 tour is called the "We're still here" tour. LOL!)
Let's export that. The neanderthals might even learn to be nice to other people and treat them with kindness as I saw so many people do today. Oh and one other thing, when Jimmy talked about what a great party ship an aircraft carrier makes because he recently did a show for the troops in Dubai, the crowd went nuts clapping and hollering for our guys over there.
Partying and patriotism. Rock on!!
Exporting music to the MI? Not without kazoo lessons first.
You can export music to people who don't have a kazoo, but they will never play along with it.
Kazoo: 'A musical toy consisting of a tube that is open at both ends and has a hole in the side covered with parchment or membrane, which produces a buzzing sound when the performer hums into one end'.
I am certain that the kazoo passes the sharia test.
No muslim that I know of has ever been killed for playing the kazoo.
Kazooing is the perfect musical pass time for muslims who like to hum and buzz already, and don't want to offend the sensibilities of the religious police...
Kazooing is halal.
An enterprising muslim could do a good business selling kazoo's to his brothers, 'Kazoo For You'.
A kazoo to you too, Allah willing, and he always is...buzz and hum on that...
duh-swami
I don't think I've ever told you how much I like your style. (Since I've been systematically studying the archives, I can say that I have read your very first posting ever, and you've been consistent from day one.) Your posts are often a joy to read; and your perspective as one who has worked in a psychiatric hospital and seen the more terrifying kinds of human mental disorder up close, is very valuable.
dumbledoresarmy...Thank you. I am humbled as I think you are a good writer, and know your stuff.
:)